GraphicsFinal

Instructions

This project is ready to clone and run as is, except for two things:

1. The toolset used may be for Visual Studio 2019 (v142), so make sure to adjust the toolset to whatever you are using in the solution properties.
2. Run Local Windows Debugger build task (it will fail). Go to the lib folder, and copy assimp-vc143-mtd.dll (or assimp-vc142-mtd.dll if you are using Visual Studio 2019) to the newly createdx64/Debug, this is the directory where the executable will be built.

Techniques

Shadow Mapping

The castle and the grass in the scene cast shadows onto the terrain.

Gamma Correction

We employed gamma correction to brighten the image a bit and make it pop more.

Normal Mapping

The castle uses normal mapping to simulate lighting off of the rough texture.

Blending

Blending was used on the water to aid in refraciton. You can enable blending on the grass in the IMGUI window.

Framebuffers

We use 3 framebuffers:

1. Reflection buffer for the water reflection texture. We take the camera, invert y position and pitch, and use a clipping plane to render everything above the water.
2. Refraction buffer for the water refraction texture. We use a clipping plane to only render things below the water.
3. Depth buffer for shadow mapping

Cube Map

There is a cubemap for a skybox in the background.

Geometry Shader

The grass is done using a geometry shader on the points generated by the tessellation shader for the terrain. The geometry shader will not draw grass below water level, and it reads from a path texture to selectively not draw grass in some places as well to create a dirt path.

Instancing

The tree models are drawn using instancing.

Model Loading

The castle and the trees are loaded using Assimp.

Tessellation Shader

The terrain is generated from a heightmap using a tessellation shader. For each patch generated by the tessellation shader, we compute the normal. Based on the normal, we either use a dirt texture or a cliff texture.

Simple Depth Based Fog

IMGUI Controls